Tata Steel 2016 - Video Recap - Round 4

Opening: B12: Caro-Kann: advance variation

Player(s): Hou, Navara

IM Christof Sielecki recaps Round 4. News Of the Day is that Hou Yifan, playing a fantastic game, with sacs and ruthless determination, defeated David Navara, to join the group at +1 with So, Ding, Karjakin and Eljanov. Carlsen drew his fourth game in a row. Today he faced Mamedyarov, who must have felt a bit Shaky (pun intended) after yesterday's horrible blunder. However, the game was pretty uneventful. Magnus and Mame followed the same opening played by Eljanov and Wei Yi earlier in the tournament. In that game Eljanov, with white, achieved nothing out of the opening, and the same thing happened in Carlsen's game. An odd choice by the World Champion. Wei Yi was a bit better for almost the whole game against Adams, mostly because of Adams' "odd" advanced pawn on the h file. Adams, as usual, defended tenaciously, and the game ended in a draw. Giri vs. Caruana was more interesting. Giri hasn't had a good start: he lost the first round and was totally lost in round 3 against Navara. On the other hand, Caruana started brilliantly, with 2.5/3. The game got very complicated right after the opening; Caruana reached a nice position, forcing Giri to sac an exchange. Giri had positional compensation, but eventually Caruana entered a won rook endgame. Unfortunately for Fabiano, he was down to less than 3 minutes on the clock, and could not find the winning plan. Eljanov won his second game in a row, after yesterday's "gift" by Mamedyarov. Today Pavel played Van Wely, who so far had had a good event, drawing the first three games. The players reached a position where all Loek had to do was wait, sit there and shuffle. The engines, at move 31, give a laconic 0.00, which means dead draw. But Van Wely, trying to get some initiative, blundered badly with 32...Rf2?, serving to his opponent the winning move on a silver platter. The strong Ukrainian GM didn't miss the chance and went on to win the game. Karjakin and Tomashevsky played an Italian game, that is quite out-of-fashion these days. Tomashevsky, oddly enough, played in a rather passive way, allowing the Russian to build up and reach a comfortable position, with a firm grasp on the center, ready to gain space and attack. Tomashevsky found himself short on ideas and moves - as he said in a post-game interview - and with Karjakin pressing hard, he resigned. After 4 rounds, Caruana at +2 still leads solo, with 3 points. Tomorrow is the first rest day of the event. Play resumes Thursday, at 7:30AM EST.